With Josh Cuevas off to the NFL, Alabama will be looking to break in a new starting TE in 2026. On top of that, There is an interesting trend happening in football right now where teams are going with 2 and 3 tight ends on the field much more often (two of the top offenses in the NFL last year relied heavily on it, and it was talked about a lot on the airwaves). And as football is a copycat sport, there’s always a chance that Alabama increases their tight end usage.
As a further fascinating factor
for the position group, Alabama hired a new TE coach, Richard Owens, who brings a strong career of experience as a TE coach, OL coach, and run game coordinator. However you slice it, he’s expected to focus and mold the group to be a run blocking unit, not just a a collection of big pass catchers.
And so with that, the Tide has added a number of new players who may very well contribute early and often.
If you missed any of our previous Meet the New Guys pieces, check out the story stream here.
As always, all of the recruit rankings will be from the 247Sports Composite, though I will mention if On3/Rivals or ESPN have any drastically different opinions on a given player.
Mack Sutter
Position: TE
Stars: 4
Hometown: Dunlap, IL
National Rank: 122
Position Rank: 5
Height: 6’5”
Weight: 230
Sutter is the son of a former NFL linebacker, and he brings some really impressive production numbers at the 6A level in Illinois over the last couple of years as both a receiver and a linebacker to the table. 600 receiving yards and 9 touchdowns, plus 55 tackles on defense.
He’s an elite athlete with elite size, and 247 has reported that he ran a 4.46s forty – which is just absurd for someone 6’5” 230. Interestingly, 247’s individual rankings (not the composite) have Sutter as the #71 overall player, while Rivals and ESPN both have him below 150.
Playstyle
Sutter is a long-legged athlete who got his start at WR before moving into a tight end role, and it shows with his downfield route-running and speed. He’s not just a strider, either. He’s got impressive quickness and change of direction abilities, often spinning safeties around with double moves 15 yards down field. And when he gets a little bit of open grass, he can turn things into a race for the endzone in a hurry.
As a pass catcher, he does tend to underhand catch everything, which could be an issue for him in college. He’s excellent at picking up underthrown balls, but will jump unnecessarily to catch balls underhanded sometimes.
Essentially, he’s an extremely dangerous downfield threat and someone that can really stress the seams or outrun linebackers to sidelines.
As a blocker, he was pretty much solely a WR before his senior season, but has shown some promise this past year. He’s definitely an enthusiastic blocker, particularly on the perimeter, and loves throwing defensive backs to the ground. I do thing his technique tends to be dangerously close to a grab and pull, rather than a push, which will get him into some trouble in college. He also still hasn’t done too much inline blocking.
Scheme Fit and Prediction
Sutter is definitely more of a high-upside developmental guy, very much in the same profile as OJ Howard a decade ago. His downfield receiving threat is something that you can’t teach tight ends, and is the kind of thing that can transform an entire offense if schemed up correctly.
On the other hand, he’s got a lot of work to do to get college ready in many other aspects of his game.
I think this is probably a redshirt year for Sutter as he learns behind a fairly deep room of more veteran players, but he’ll have a chance in a year or two to really be a weapon.
Josh Ford
Position: TE
Transfer School: Oklahoma State
Class: Junior
Stars: 3 (recruit), 3 (transfer)
Hometown: Stillwater, OK
National Rank: 1501 (recruit), 519 (transfer)
Position Rank: 76 (recruit), 35 (transfer)
Height: 6’6”
Weight: 265
Ford is something of a throwback tight end who did plenty of fullback/H-back stuff even in high school as a guy who just relished in the idea of running headfirst into a linebacker. Seriously, the dude has an 18 minute highlight reel from high school, and a full 9 minutes of it is him blocking poor souls into smithereens.
Ford quickly carved a role for himself as a true freshman at Oklahoma State, catching 10 passes for 92 yards and a touchdown (almost 2 TDs, but he had one where he dove for the pylon and was ruled just barely short) and leading the position group as a freshman. In year 2, Ford was off to a good start through the first four games of the year and led the team in PFF’s run blocking grade, but was then suddenly sidelined with an injury in October and announced that he would hit the transfer portal after longtime coach Mike Gundy was fired.
Playstyle
Ford is, first and foremost, a lead blocker. In the old days, he’d have been a fullback, but in today’s age, he tends to line up as an H-back and move around in the backfield to get into position to shoot through the line or around the edge and lay into a linebacker. Past that, though, he’s also grown as an in-line blocker, with a little over half of his snaps in Stillwater coming on the edge. At 6’6” 265, he’s not far off from being as big as a collegiate offensive tackle, so he can hold his own there against defensive ends.
As a pass catcher, the Cowboys used him on a few rollouts and curl routes at the first down marker, but he was far from a focus of the passing game. He also dropped three balls on only 23 total career targets.
With the ball in his hands, he’s not fast, but he did makes a few impressive plays diving for the first down marker and fighting through a tackle to get there, so he can definitely make a little happen when he does get the ball.
Scheme Fit and Prediction
Alabama desperately needs a tight end that can really boost the run game, and Ford is that guy. I fully expect him to occupy the Robbie Ouzts role from 2024 as a primary rotational starter for the Tide, and he’ll likely be Alabama’s #2 TE in total snaps. He probably won’t have more than 10-15 catches, but I personally believe that he may have been the most important roster addition for the Tide this offseason.
